Comparison of auditory, visual, and audiovisual navigation in a 3D space

ABSTRACT

A navigation test was carried out in a spatially immersive virtual environment. The test was a gamelike experience where the task of subjects was to find as many gates as possible while they navigated through a track guided by auditory and/or visual cues. The results are presented as a function of the number of found gates, searching times, and normalized path lengths. Audiovisual navigation was clearly the most efficient. Visual navigation was second and the auditory navigation the least efficient. Further analysis of travel paths indicate that auditory cues were utilized in the beginning to locate the next gate; a visual cue was the most important in the final approach to the gate.

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INDEX TERMS

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
Virtual reality, auditory display, auditory navigation, spatial audio